Educational Technology

July 31, 2013

7 Time-Saving iPad Tips For Teachers

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

by tedgarza, Edudemic

The iPad is a great tool for a classroom. It will soon be the case that any educator will feel as though the iPad is entirely necessary. One of the reasons for this is because it is a tool that quashes inequality in the classroom. Children with disabilities have been able to use iPads and work at the same speed as the other children. Another reason for the popularity of this machine is because it makes the educator’s job easier. They can teach better than ever before, but only if they know how to use it properly.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/7-time-saving-ipad-tips-for-teachers/

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What Is A Flipped Classroom? (Updated For 2013)

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Flipped learning has been around for awhile. It’s a rethinking of the standard classroom model that puts students in the driver’s seat. With the influx of technology into education, the flipped classroom model has really taken off. In fact, it’s one of the hottest education trends we’ve been monitoring on Edudemic for the past 4 years. We published a useful guide to flipped classrooms many moons ago but were excited to see an updated visual guide to flipped classrooms from the fine folks at We Are Teachers. It details the basics of flipping, apps that you should use in a flipped classroom, and more.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/what-is-a-flipped-classroom-updated-for-2013/

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9 Wrong And 8 Right Ways Students Should Use Technology

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Technology is a tool. It’s not a learning outcome. Too often do we get distracted by all the activities and action we can perform with an iPad or some other device. We can post to Edmodo! Make a Prezi! Post to Facebook! All exciting things, to be sure. But these are not actually learning outcomes. You could have a 1:1 iPad classroom where your students create a bazillion (it’s a word, I swear) presentations all about how much they’re learning.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/9-wrong-and-8-right-ways-students-should-use-technology/

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July 30, 2013

Roundtable: Infrastructure, teacher training key to improving technology in classrooms

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:41 am

By Lynh Bui, Washington Post

The future of digital learning in classrooms will require more than just getting tablets in the hands of students to be successful. Education leaders and policymakers must focus on investing on infrastructure and professional training for teachers and administrators to grow technology in education. That was one of the major themes education technology experts, lobbyists and policy makers repeated at a Monday roundtable discussion, organized by Internet Innovation Alliance, and which focused on how private and public sectors can work together to improve digital learning in the nation’s classrooms.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/roundtable-infrastructure-teacher-training-key-to-improving-technology-in-classrooms/2013/07/15/e7158bc6-ed75-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html

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Saylor Foundation launches open online K-12 courses

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:36 am

by Cable Green, Creative Commons

The Saylor Foundation recently launched a new K-12 program on Saylor.org, debuting courses for grades 6-12 in English language arts and mathematics. A team of experienced educators and staff are developing courses fully aligned to the US Common Core State Standards. Like Saylor’s college-level courses, the K-12 program incorporates open educational resources (OER), making the courses, as well as their contents, widely reusable by students, teachers, and parents nationwide. The course frameworks and instructions are available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Thus, while the courses are ready for use as-is, anyone may also reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute their courses to meet local needs.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/38900

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Open Textbooks: Trends and Opportunities

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Pierre Gorissen, Classroom Aid

Open textbooks can remove at least some of the problems associated with electronic books. An open textbook is an electronic textbook, published under an open licence, that can be shared online by the author/authors or via a commercial or non-profit publisher. The open licence allows it to be downloaded, printed, or read online without additional payment (Keller). The general assumption is that if the book is to meet the definition of “open textbook” users must at least be able to use it without paying to do so, to copy and distribute it for non-commercial use, and to convert it to a different format to the original. Rightholders also often permit content to be added or removed, thus making it possible to create new, derivative works on the basis of the open textbook. Commercial use can also be permitted.

http://classroom-aid.com/2013/07/18/open-textbooks-trends-and-opportunities/

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July 29, 2013

11 Innovative Strategies for Ensuring Device Equity

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

By Lisa Nielsen, TechLearning

School officials wondering what to do for students who lack their own notebook computers, smartphones or tablets can acquire extra devices with a little bit of ingenuity…. I believed in the importance of access for every student, so I came up with innovative ways to ensure that technology was available to them when they were in the library. This meant not only allowing students to bring their own device (if they had one), but also helping students — and the school — acquire devices at little or no cost. Here are ways to ensure ­device equity even when budgets are tight or nonexistent.

http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&entryid=6210

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Digital Literacy Course for Educators Popular

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Karen Kucher, UT SanDiego

A 13-week course in digital literacy designed to help educators become more tech savvy attracted nearly 300 enrolled students when it began this month. Billed as a way to prepare teachers and others for the school year, the free online class is being offered in two segments as a massive open, online course, which students take from home. The course is geared toward educators but would appeal to anyone interested in strengthening their skills in digital tools, said Emil Ahangarzadeh, director of the Technical Statewide Educational Technology Services. The organization was developed by the county Office of Education with funding from the state to support IT professionals in the education field.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jul/18/tp-digital-literacy-course-for-educators-popular/

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Free Courses for a Big Problem

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

They have created their own online content, sometimes tapping free lectures from the Khan Academy or other sources. And rather than using it for stand-alone courses, the colleges have designed supplemental study guides for remedial classes or for the placement tests incoming students take. Remediation is a serious stumbling block for students. Research has found that just one in four students who place into remedial courses will eventually earn a college credential or transfer to a four-year institution.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/19/two-year-colleges-go-open-source-seek-fix-remediation

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July 28, 2013

Roundtable: Infrastructure, teacher training key to improving technology in classrooms

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

By Lynh Bui, Washington Post

The future of digital learning in classrooms will require more than just getting tablets in the hands of students to be successful. Education leaders and policymakers must focus on investing on infrastructure and professional training for teachers and administrators to grow technology in education. That was one of the major themes education technology experts, lobbyists and policy makers repeated at a Monday roundtable discussion, organized by Internet Innovation Alliance, and which focused on how private and public sectors can work together to improve digital learning in the nation’s classrooms.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/roundtable-infrastructure-teacher-training-key-to-improving-technology-in-classrooms/2013/07/15/e7158bc6-ed75-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html

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Dropbox Aims to Replace Your Hard Drive

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by CIO

Storing files is just the beginning. Dropbox will soon allow you to sync and transfer files, data, to-do lists and more between any of the devices you own. When Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says he wants to kill the hard drive, he doesn’t mean it literally, of course. What he does mean, though, is that Dropbox is becoming much more than a place in the cloud to stash your digital stuff. It’s becoming a platform, the center of a suite of different applications and technologies that will allow users to manage and share a wide range of content on laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

http://blogs.cio.com/online-storage/18124/dropbox-aims-replace-your-hard-drive

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10 Ways to Be an Authentic IT Leader

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:29 am

By Rich Hein, CIO

Most of us have had a boss or worked with someone who tried hard to portray himself or herself as something they weren’t. Not only was it off-putting to their co-workers and subordinates, but it was likely exhausting for them. You can’t lead people by trying to be something you aren’t. Being an authentic leader helps to create an environment where people are not only confident in your ability to get the job done, but also in your motives for doing so. So what can you do to be a more authentic leader with your teams? CIO.com spoke with CIOs and professional-development experts to find out what it takes to be the leader people want to follow. Here are 10 keys.

http://www.cio.com/article/736337/10_Ways_to_Be_an_Authentic_IT_Leader

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July 27, 2013

4 Reasons Schools Should Actively Engage With Their Communities

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

In a nutshell, ICANNLabs is a powerful way that the organization wants to engage with its community. Rather than relying on simple feedback or discussion boards, the organization is jumping right into the thick of it and taking in as much information as possible. In other words, the ICANN team is actively engaging with its users, managers, and worldwide community. They’re using a stakeholder bottom-up model which affords everyone a voice and the ability to influence the future of the organization. Now apply that idea to your school. Would your school be able to handle jumping into its community and taking in all the feedback (good and bad)? Would the decision-makers actually make decisions based on a consensus of stakeholders like parents and teachers? Would your school be able to do something as massive as making sure the entire Internet is properly run? Okay, probabaly not that last one but you get the idea.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/icannlabs-schools-engage-with-communities/

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3 Ways MOOCs Benefit Teachers

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

BY ASEF.AHMED, Kaltura

MOOCs, massive online open courses, such as Coursera and MIT and Harvard’s EDx have been the talk of the educational town for the past few months. While the concept is not an entirely novel phenomenon, recent technological innovations in streaming video in addition to the backing of several top universities have made them wildly popular; validating the “M” in MOOC (Coursera alone has about 4 million users).   The majority of the debate on MOOCs centers on the (supposed) benefits that face students. But don’t teachers stand to be impacted just as much if not more than students? Why then is the dialogue so student-centric? Today, we are going to focus on our thoroughly underappreciated and unrecognized teachers and discuss how MOOCs can benefit them as well.

http://blog.kaltura.org/3-ways-moocs-benefit-teachers

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Two Courses That Made a Difference in Student Retention

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Doug Holton, EdTechDev

Universities and colleges have a huge problem with retaining and graduating their students – particularly students in STEM areas (science, technology, engineering, math, where 60% drop out or transfer) and students at community colleges (55% never graduate). But state colleges (only 51 to 77% graduate [ref]) and many private universities also have retention problems (Western Governors only has a 6.5% graduation rate). Online programs and courses also suffer from poor retention (see “The dirty little secret of online learning: Students are bored and dropping out“), and of course MOOCs have the worst retention of all, with an average of 90 to 95% of enrollees never completing the courses (see an earlier post that discusses pedagogical problems with many MOOCs). All universities and programs are also showing disparities in the graduation rates of minority and low income students.

http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/two-courses-that-made-a-difference-in-student-retention/

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July 26, 2013

The Educator’s Guide To Competency-Based Learning

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:41 am

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

A report from The National Center for Education Statistics found that thirty-eight percent of those enrolled in higher education are over the age of 25 and one-fourth are over the age of 30. The share of all students who are over age 25 is projected to increase another twenty-three percent by 2019. These findings demonstrate a significant shift in the traditional higher education student. While many developments, such as MOOCs, Open Educational Resources, flipped classroom models and accelerated three-year degree programs have entered the landscape, another great option for variety in learning is Competency-Based Learning (CBL).

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/competency-based-learning/

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The 7 Skills Students Must Have For The Future

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Are students prepared for the future? Are they graduating ready to innovate? What are some of the skills students should have in order to have a successful future? Those are some of the questions Tony Wagner (follow him on Twitter @DrTonyWagner) answers in a powerful talk all about the skills students must have for the future.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/the-7-skills-students-must-have-for-the-future/

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Classes should do hands-on exercises before reading and video, Stanford researchers say

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

BY DAVID PLOTNIKOFF, Stanford

A study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education of how students best learned a neuroscience lesson showed a distinct benefit to starting out by working with an interactive 3D model of the brain. The researchers drew on data gathered from students using the BrainExplorer, a tabletop tool that simulates how the human brain processes visual images. A new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education flips upside down the notion that students learn best by first independently reading texts or watching online videos before coming to class to engage in hands-on projects. Studying a particular lesson, the Stanford researchers showed that when the order was reversed, students’ performances improved substantially.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/july/flipped-learning-model-071613.html

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July 25, 2013

20+ Sites/Resources to Learn Web Design & Development (For Free)

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:39 am

by eGrappler

The web design & development education industry has exploded from a small niche to a powerful, continually expanding force. Countless people around the globe are interested in learning about how to design and develop websites, and tons of companies are cropping up promising the ultimate solution. The competition in this field is a great thing for customers. You have more options than ever for learning just about anything you want to know about web technologies. For those, who wants to learn web design and development, we are sharing following high quality sites and resources. Start learning web design and development today!

http://www.egrappler.com/20-sites-resources-to-learn-web-design-development-for-free/

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13 Free Web Tools Students and Teachers Should Know About

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:36 am

by Katrina Schwartz, Mind/Shift

Web-based tools continue to proliferate, giving teachers more to add to their arsenal, but it can be hard to determine which resources are worth spending time exploring. At the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) conference this year, Adam Bellow, founder of EduClipper, and Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager for Discovery Education offered a quick run through of some favorite apps. The two educators are early adopters of ed-tech classroom strategies and have a lot of experience with tech integration.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/13-free-web-tools-students-and-teachers-should-know-about/

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American Research Universities Face Growing Wave of Cyberattacks

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Ed

American research universities are facing an increasing spate of cyberattacks, many of which are thought to come from China, testing their ability to ward off the attacks and forcing some to overhaul their security policies, The New York Times reports. Campus officials who specialize in information technology and data security told the Times that detection is a key concern for institutions in trying to thwart the attacks because many hackers are adept at routing their efforts though computers and countries around the world. William S. Mellon, associate dean for research policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the newspaper that his institution’s system is besieged by 90,000 to 100,000 hacking attempts per day from China alone, with many others coming from Russia and Vietnam.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/american-research-universities-face-growing-wave-of-cyberattacks/63209

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